>>>Museum at Buena Vista

Museum at Buena Vista

Mary Wheeler and her husband had always had an interest in Lewis and Clark and bought Buena Vista in the 1970s because the Clark family once owned the property. The previous owner's had found the foundation for the Clark structure at Buena Vista (Buena Vista was the name of the house built in the Civil War on the property). The Wheelers purchased a structure that was contemporaneous with the Clark cabin, the Walker Mill House, in the early 1970s. They had the house disassembled and hired local experts and artisans to reconstruct the house on top of the existing foundation. In 1975, the Wheelers opened the George Rogers Clark museum, which was filled with mostly period farming and cooking equipment. The museum was an attempt to reconstruct the type of dwelling the Clarks would have lived in and educate the public to the importance of the Clarks in Albemarle's and the nation's history. The museum was open between May and October each year and closed permanently in 1981 because Mary Wheeler lived on the property alone(Wheeler, 2002).